"Massive Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, consists of three large stratovolcanoes constructed along a NW-SE trend. The ice-capped, 5895-m-high summit towers 5200 m above the surrounding plains. Activity at the older cone of Shira that forms the broad WNW shoulder of Kilimanjaro began during the Pliocene, and the extensively dissected Mawenzi forms a prominent, sharp-topped peak of Pleistocene age on the upper ESE flank dominated by a densely packed radial dike swarm. More than 250 satellitic cones occupy a rift zone to the NW and SE of Kibo, the central stratovolcano. A 2.4 x 3.6 km caldera gives the summit of Kibo an elongated, broad profile. Most of Kilimanjaro was constructed during the Pleistocene, but a group of youthful-looking nested summit craters are of apparent Holocene age, and fumarolic activity continues." -Smithsonian Volcano Archive